Abbas el-Akkad

Abbas Mahmudal-Aqqad[‘Abbās Maḥmūd al-‘Aqqād] (Arabic: عباس محمودالعقاد‎)(June 28, 1889–March 12, 1964) was an Egyptian writer.BiographyAl-Aqqad was born in Aswan, a city in Upper Egypt, in1889. He received little formal education, completing only his elementaryeducation. Unlike his schoolmates, he spent all his weekly allowance on books.He read about religion, geography, history and many other subjects. He wasknown for his excellent English and French.He wrote more than 100 books aboutphilosophy, religion, and poetry. He founded a poetry school with Ibrahim Al-Mazny and Abdel Rahman Shokry called Al-Diwan. He died in 1964 in Cairo. His most famous works were al-'Abkariat,Allah, and Sarah. Some of his books were translated into English.Al-Aqqad was known for his use of flowery and complicated prose. Romantic RelationshipsAl-Aqqad experienced two majorromantic relationships in his life. The first was with a Christian Lebaneselady, whom he called "Sarah" in his novel of the same name. Thesecond was with the famous Egyptian actress Madiha Yusri. This relationship wasended by al-Aqqad himself, because of Yusri's career as an actress. Al-Aqqadwrote a poetry work about this relationship called Cyclones of a Sunset(A-Asiru Maghrib in Arabic).It was reported by prolificEgyptian author Anis Mansour and various other attendees of Al-Aqqad's famous'lounge' that he kept a painting in his bedroom that displayed a beautiful cakewith cockroaches crawling over it. Supposedly, Al-Aqqad kept this in his roomas 'the first thing he looked at in the morning and the last thing he saw inthe evening'. It symbolized beauty and purity (the cake) that is wasted to theglamor of spotlights (the cockroaches) as was the case (as he perceived) withactress Madiha Yusri.DeathAl Aqqad died in the early morningof March 13, 1964. His corpse was transported by train to his hometown Aswan in southern Upper Egypt,where it was buried the same day.In the early 1980s, an Egyptiantelevision series was produced about the life of al-Aqqad, which was titled TheGiant (Al Imlaq in Arabic). It starred the late Egyptian actorMahmud Mursi.